Dive Instructor with Gap Year Diver, Egypt

I'd always wanted to get in to diving as a career and after seeing an advert for Gap Year Diver I got in touch with Ben – the UK coordinator. He took me through all of the packages available to me and explained a little bit about the lifestyle in Dahab. It sounded amazing and I signed up straight away. Two weeks later I was sat on a plane bound for place I'd never been before, to do a 3month career development course that would see me go from an Advanced Open Water diver through to an Instructor.

Within a day of arriving Dahab felt like home, the laid back feel in the town and the friendly people, both in the town and at the dive centre, made me sure I'd made the right decision in coming.

The other guys staying in the house, doing the same course as me were great fun and we were all soon well under way with our training. The rescue course flew past and we learnt how to assist other divers in distress as well as how to spot stress in divers and how to deal with that stress before getting in the water, something that was developed further during my Dive Master Internship.

The DM internship lasted about 5 weeks, during which I was assigned a primary instructor, who mentored me through the course, and allocated me to other instructors to assist on courses and help guide dives with customers. Although the Dive Master course has a lot of extra dive theory involved in it, the staff were really great at explaining things and with their help my theory exams went by with no problems.

After working as a Divemaster for a few weeks it was time for the IDC (Instructor Development Course). Ed one of the course directors flew in to guide us through the 11 day course, in which we learnt to teach the skills that we had acquired through our own training. This included classroom presentations, confined water lessons, open water lessons and further theory development. The IDC flew by and before I knew it the Instructor Exam was upon us.

Two days of being tested later and it was all over, I was an Instructor! My time in Dahab has been amazing, all of the staff have been brilliant, helping to ensure that I got the most out of my course and out of my time in Dahab overall. I look forward to working with them all in the New Year when I return as one of the newly employed member of staff as an Instructor for 2010!

Mike